


On love and monsters

by idontwantrobyntodie



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Love Confessions, One Shot, Post-Chapter 699 (Naruto), Sad with a Happy Ending, Slice of Life, beta read ish, like seriously this boy should have, naruto has all the Issues canon forgot to give him, not for grammar but for Feels, so many issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27377065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idontwantrobyntodie/pseuds/idontwantrobyntodie
Summary: During the Last, Naruto ponders on Hinata's confession, the nature of love, and whether or not he is worthy of it at all
Relationships: Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	On love and monsters

**Author's Note:**

> A lil oneshot set during the last, t'has been a while since I've refreshed my brain on the naruto info so the timeline might be a bit messed up, in which case I'm sorry but not sorry enough to do the research. I've been a writer for as long as le procrastination brain has allowed me to, but this is my first foray into fanfiction (am a little proud of myself for holding out eighteen years...) SO if this is a disaster it's still my fault but not as much as it would have been.  
> Please enjoy!

On the night that he didn’t invite Hinata to his apartment for ramen, though not for any lack of trying, Naruto got home to collapse on the creaky mattress of his childhood bed, stare at the water damage on the ceiling, and just think. He wasn’t usually much of a thinker— thoughts running through his head with nowhere to go made him ansty, and he preferred to just _do_ — but now he wasn’t sure what there was to do, so there was nothing left to do but think.

_Because I love you._

He had been stupid to only have seen it after she said it (and then for some time after that). Naruto was fully aware of his own stupidity, as were most of the people around him. Sakura-chan had given him grief about it, about how he hadn’t noticed, because that was how Sakura-chan was, fierce in everything she did, whether it be love or hate. Hinata was softer— not weak, but soft. Gentle. You could see it in those eyes of hers, slow iron strength wrapped in the kind of softness there wasn’t enough of in the world, eyes that tracked every move he made. And he had seen, in his own way. How could he not have? There was no ignoring those eyes, wide and white, but not blank like people described them, not when they were brimming with so much feeling, fixed onto him with unwavering diligence from where she stood half hidden behind trees or her teammates. She had become part of the landscape, soft smile and steady blush, when he noticed her at all.

But love was never a word that came to his mind when he did.

He knew there were people who loved him, of course. Sasuke must love him, brother to him that he was, in that hate mingled way he loved anything at all. Sakura-chan loved him, to his crushing younger self’s begrudging satisfaction , the way a sister loved, cracking him on the back of the head with a roll of her eyes one moment and letting the unyielding soothing of her healing chakra run through him at the last. Iruka-sensei loved him, with beaming pride. Why else would he have put up with Naruto at twelve, spilling the broth as he slurped down noodles and then slipping away before he had to pay? Kakashi-sensei... well, Kakashi-sensei tolerated him, which is more than he could say for a lot of people. His friends, the other rookies he had come of age with amid sweat and salt and laughter, admired him, or were fond of him, and that was love of a kind. The admirers that stopped him on the street now that he was their hero might not love him, but they certainly didn’t hate him, and that was better than what had been before.

They had never said so, not out loud (Sakura-chan’s desperate attempt to lie to keep him sated didn’t count, as well meaning as it had been), but he knew they must love him.

So yes, Naruto knew he was loved, by the surrogate family he had crafted for himself, the one that grew day by day. But knowing was different than believing, and at that moment, as he scoured the ceiling for the crack shaped like a bunny that had been his favourite when he was little without realizing the flaking paint had long since cracked it away, Naruto was not thinking of Hinata. He was thinking of Mizuki-sensei, leering a demon’s grin down at him from his perch up on a tree as words that changed everything crept out from behind his teeth. Naruto knew they hadn’t been, but in his memories of that night those teeth were sharp and pointed.

_Naruto’s a monster fox_

Monster. Monster. Monster. That word had echoed through his head and through his life, so loud and ugly that it had masked the more insidious words that had crept in behind it and taken root deep beneath, so deep he tended to forget they were there, but the roots never eased. No matter how pretty the surface grew.

_No one will ever love you_

He had half forgotten those words that night, in the flurry of everything that happened after them. It hadn’t stung when he heard it, not as much as other things did, because it was true, as much as he hated it. The sun had risen in the mornings and it would set in the evening. Sasuke-teme had been top of their class this year and he would be top of their class next year, especially now that graduation had set it in stone. No one had loved Naruto yesterday, and no one loved Naruto now, and no one would love Naruto, ever. No matter how many times he made simpering eyes at Sakura-chan or glared at Sasuke or tackle hugged whoever let him only for them to shove him away, no one would ever love him and that was fine. He wouldn’t need love to gain people’s approval. He wouldn’t need love to have his head carved onto Hokage monument. All he needed was himself and his iron will, so when Hinata quietly admired him all those years and fainted (really fainted!) when he spoke to her he saw but didn’t see. Hinata had stood above his broken body, swaying like a sapling in a storm, and let her heart spill out of her tongue, his mind had glossed it over and made him forget. Because Hinata, sweet and soft and shy, didn’t love him. She couldn’t love him. No one did.

Except that now someone did, undeniable, irrefutably. Naruto knew he was a knucklehead but he also knew that when someone followed your every move with unblinking eyes and blushed crimson when you talked and told you they loved you it meant they loved you. Hinata loved him. He knew that. He just had to convince himself to believe it.

And maybe, once he did, he could learn to love her back.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope t'was a good experience  
> Thinking about Naruto's relationship with Hinata got my gears turning about how foreign with the idea of being loved unconditionally he really has to be, considering his background, and then this happened. Naruto should be way more traumatized than he is shown to be and I think he is but uses his personality as a defense mechanism.  
> A note on the lines I borrowed from chapter/episode one: "No one will ever love you" came out of the legally iffy scanlated version I first read Naruto on, which really hit me in the gut. The other line I've seen most other versions translate pretty simply as just "You are the nine-tailed fox" or similar variations, but the first pirated copy I watched (i'm really exposing myself here... its fine it's naruto its not like studio pierrot NEED the money) had the line as "naruto's a monster fox" and it really stuck with me  
> Bottom line is I pick and choose from translations as I see fit. It's my story and I get to pick the canon.  
> Pls let me know if enjoyed! More oneshots may be incoming, because I love doing character studies, depending on the graces of my ADHD. I will now shut up.  
> Thank you!


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